


Dadhood

by redcandle17



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Humor, Nux Lives, Slit Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-05-20 01:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5988172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/pseuds/redcandle17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Wifed". Slit experiences the bumpy ride of fatherhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. So that's where pups come from!

Slit leapt into bed and pulled the covers all the way up over his head. He would have run to his old bunk and hidden there, but Axle and his Wretched wife lived there now. It had been awful. So awful. He still couldn’t believe it. What sort of monstrous gods had decided that that was how new humans were brought into this world? It was a wonder there was anyone at all!

“Slit?”

He felt Toast sit on the bed beside him and then he felt her hand on his shoulder.

“My poor sweet, silly man. The Dag is fine. It went well, as these things go. The baby is a healthy girl. Do you want to see her?”

There had been so much blood and screams of pain. Slit was used to Witnessing his fellow War Boys die bloody and screaming, but it had been quite another thing to see a not-wife like that. And she hadn’t even been wounded in war. Birthing a pup was supposed to be normal and soft, but clearly what he’d known for most of his life was a lie. It was terrible and there couldn’t be anything normal and soft about _that_.

“I guess this isn’t the best time to tell you that we’re going to be parents in about two hundred and thirty days.”

Slit tugged the blanket down just enough so he could peek at his wife. Surely she was joking. But she didn’t look like she was joking. 

“I wanted to be sure before I told you. But I’ve always been regular until now and I’m very late…”

It was true she hadn’t bled when Slit had expected her to, but since she hadn’t stopped breeding with him, he hadn’t given it much thought. Once Slit might have been thrilled at the prospect of having a pup of his own, but that was before he’d seen how pups came into the world. It was awful and the thought of Toast suffering ‘childbirth’ was too horrible to consider.

“No! Don’t want pups!”

“Well, what did you think was going to happen? You were happy to ‘breed’!”

“Can you get rid of it?” he asked. He’d heard whispers about women having unwanted babies removed from their wombs, but he’d assumed it was just some made-up story since he hadn’t understood why they wouldn’t want pups. He understood now. 

A strange look crossed his wife’s face. “Angharad tried once. Maybe because she was Joe’s favorite and she’d never been punished. The rest of us, we were too afraid to try because we remembered what he’d do for far lesser infractions. She was lucky that Furiosa stopped her.”

Then she shook her head and kissed his forehead. She rubbed his head playfully. “I can’t wait to see what our baby will be like. Luckily your ego can’t be genetic.”

Slit had learned that ‘ego’ was what him knowing how shine he was, was called. And ‘genetic’ was the name for the things that your parents passed on to you. He didn’t understand why Toast wouldn’t want their pup to be born knowing it was the best pup in the world, but, more pressingly, he didn’t understand how she could be happy after watching her sister suffer terrible pain for a whole day. 

Maybe it was because the Dag had had a girl pup. She’d really wanted a girl pup rather than a boy pup. Maybe Toast wanted a girl pup too. Slit wanted a boy pup, one who’d be just like him but even better. 

“Let’s name him Tyrannosaurus!”

Toast looked surprised. Then she laughed. Then she frowned when she realized he wasn’t joking. “That’s a hell of a name for a kid. And it might be a her.”

“Tyrannosaurus is a shine name for either a boy pup or a girl pup!” After all, there must have been both male and female Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs. 

“I’ll think about it.”

Toast went back to see the Dag and her pup, but Slit went looking for Nux. Nux had fled the same time he had - when the baby’s head popped out of the Dag - but he hadn’t gone to the safety of his wife’s bed. Instead Slit found him under the war rig, performing an unnecessary maintenance check on its engines. 

“Toast says we’re going to have our own pup in a couple hundred days,” he announced proudly. 

“Capable and I will probably have our pup before you and Toast.”

This was the first Slit had heard about Capable expecting a pup. But he automatically replied, “No, you won’t. Mine will be born before yours!”

They argued about who’d impregnated his wife first for a while, until an old Wretched who was learning to be a black-thumb overheard and started laughing. Slit didn’t like being laughed at, especially not by some wretched Wretched. He ventured back up to the vault and peeked into the Dag’s room cautiously. 

She was feeding the pup and smiling at it, like it hadn’t caused her awful, terrible pain. 

“What are you naming it?” he asked.

“I’d planned to name her Willow, but meeting her now, she doesn’t seem like a Willow.” 

Slit honestly didn’t understand why it mattered whether it was a girl or a boy, since it was Immortan Joe’s pup either way. But it mattered to the Dag and Cheedo and the wives, so he didn’t ask about it again. 

“Well, you can’t name her Tyrannosaurus. Toast is going to name our pup that.”

The Dag arched an eyebrow and gave him that mocking smile she usually directed at him. “Believe me, Slit, I hadn’t even considered it.” 

She started to get up off of the bed, and Slit recoiled in shock and worry. He couldn’t believe she’d try to walk after enduring what she’d suffered. 

“What are you doing?!”

She gave him another of those looks. “Putting my sprog in her crib.” 

Slit hurried to pick her up. She squealed in surprise and smacked the side of his head repeatedly. But Slit held her safely until she’d put the pup in its fancy box-bed crib thing and then gently laid her back in her bed. 

“Thank you for your unwanted assistance,” she snapped. Then she grinned. “Poor Toast.”

Poor Toast indeed. Slit would like a pup of their own, but not if it meant his wife would suffer ‘childbirth’. However, it seemed she was willing to suffer the awful trial. She was so brave and strong - the most shine person ever. Slit would have to help her and decrease her burden as much as he could.


	2. Expecting

The tiny pup was crying. Slit glanced at Nux, and then they both sprinted to the pup room the wives and not-wives called the ‘nursery’. Slit reached the Dag’s pup first, but before he could pick her up, Nux smashed into him and then snatched her up.

“It’s my turn,” Nux snapped. “You did it last time.”

That was true, but Slit was sure that his pup would be born first and therefore he needed to learn faster than Nux. He watched resentfully as Nux removed the baby’s soiled diaper and wiped her bottom clean. But he had to intervene when Nux tried to put a clean diaper on her.

“That’s not how you fold it!”

“Yes, it is!”

Their arguing attracted Cheedo’s attention. She entered the nursery and nudged them both out of the way. Slit watched as she folded the clean cloth around the pup. It wasn’t how Nux had been trying to do it - he was right! - but it wasn’t exactly what he’d have done either. 

“How do you know that?” Nux asked. Slit was thinking it himself. Cheedo had never had a pup of her own, and, in fact, she was only the age at which War Pups just managed to qualify to become War Boys.

“I was taught. We all were. Joe was obsessed with babies. It was our ‘job’ to know everything about caring for them.”

Slit didn’t like to think about his wife and Capable and the not-wives being forced to do things they didn’t want to. He quickly changed the topic. “Do you really believe in ‘rain’?”

“Of course. Miss Giddy said it was real.”

Slit exchanged a skeptical look with Nux. Rain was a shine name for a pup, since the idea of it was so chrome. But he couldn’t believe that rain had actually been a real thing. Aqua Cola just falling from the sky? That only happened in dreams or after you’d eaten one of those special mushrooms. 

After she’d finished pinning on the clean diaper, Cheedo picked up Rain and held the pup against her, and began singing softly as she walked away to locate the Dag so the Dag could feed the pup.

Nux began looking through one of the picture books with strange words and ideas that Toast had assured Slit were meant for children. “Capable’s teats hurt her and she won’t let me touch them anymore,” he confided. 

Slit was horrified, and suitably sympathetic to his ex-driver’s plight. “Did you offer to rub them for her?”

Feral Mel had advised Slit to rub any part of Toast that hurt her. Toast had snapped at him after he asked her questions about the things he’d read in the books on pregnancy, so Slit had had no choice but to speak to the old feral women. They weren’t quite as terrible as he’d first thought, though Slit didn’t like the fact that they seemed amused by him.

Nux made an exasperated sound and glared at him. “She won’t let me touch them!”

But that wasn’t the worst part of expecting pups. Slit was supervising older pups throwing practice thundersticks when Runt came running and grabbed his arm urgently. 

“Your wife is eating war paint!”

Slit didn’t believe him until he saw it for himself. Toast was scooping up handfuls of white war paint and eating it like it was the tastiest fruit she’d ever eaten. 

“What are you doing?” he demanded. He tried to drag her away, but she fought him.

“I need it!”

“That’s not food!”

“It is when I need it.”

“There’s plenty of tastier things in the Dag’s garden and in the storerooms.”

“I want this!”

Slit had to pin her arms to her sides. He picked her up and carried her to the vault. “It can’t be good for our pup.”

Feral Jen said it was normal for pregnant women to crave weird things but that it wasn’t always good. She told him he’d been right to stop Toast from eating war paint. Toast wasn’t happy about that. She threatened to make him sleep under the bed, but then she started crying and he had to hold her until they both fell asleep. 

Pregnancy was awful. Toast always felt sick or various parts of her hurt. Capable’s legs grew terrible purple lines and the Organic Mechanic said it was merely ‘varicose veins’ and told Nux to rub them every night. 

The Dag’s pup had started crawling around everywhere. She was always smiling and laughing, and watching her made the Dag smile. Slit didn’t understand it. Mothers should hate pups. Pups tore their way out of their mothers’ bodies in a mess of blood and pain. If he was a mother, he’d kill the pup that did that to him. He confided his thoughts on the matter to his wife one night.

“That makes sense, and I agree in the abstract. But there are hormones and things that make mothers feel the very opposite, my darling.”

Slit was lying in bed one afternoon when Furiosa came into the vault.

“What’s the matter with him?” she asked Toast, who was writing and erasing numbers on the ‘blackboard’ as she worked on the Citadel’s supplies inventory. 

“The baby kicked a nerve and made me scream, so Slit had to go lie down,” Toast answered nonchalantly. 

He heard Imperator Furiosa laugh.

“It’s not funny,” he called weakly. He groaned at the effort it took. 

Both Toast and Capable were huge when Capable began demanding meat. Grubs and insects weren’t enough; she insisted she had to have meat. She even looked at Slit like he was a very large and tasty lizard. 

Toast granted her permission for Nux to borrow her car so he could go hunting for meat. Slit went with him. It almost felt like old times; Nux speeding through the Wasteland while Slit clung to the back of the car and looked out for things to fling thundersticks at. They caught a couple of lizards and one small snake, and Nux traded a cannister of Aqua Cola for several freshly caught crows, though Slit would rather have just killed the sky fishermen and taken their catch.

It was only a couple dozen days after that, that Slit found himself sitting beside their bed and whimpering as Toast screamed in pain. Everyone else demanded he get out of the way, but Slit refused to budge and his wife shouted at them when they tried to make him leave. Occasionally she’d reach out and touch him. Slit had tried to hold her hand, but she’d let go when he’d made a surprised noise at the unexpected strength of her grip. 

He had the dinosaur book open on his lap. Toast had made him learn to read it himself after he’d begged her to read it to him one time too many. He carefully carved the letters into his arm. His gauntlet covered this arm when he went to war, but he didn’t wear it when he was in the vault so he’d be able to see the letters and help his pup spell his or her name.

T-Y-R-A-N-N-O-S-A-U-R-U

“Congratulations, Slit,” Feral Mel said, grinning down at him. “You have a healthy baby boy.”

His wife seemed to have forgotten the hours of agony their pup had caused her. She was smiling as she cradled the baby. “He’s so beautiful.”

“Shiny and chrome,” Slit agreed.

Toast seemed to notice the name he’d been carving for the first time. “What did you do, Slit?”

She sounded very worried, so Slit hastened to reassure her. “Just our pup’s name.”

She sighed loudly. “Guess I have to name him Tyrannosaurus Rex now.” 

She glared at Slit for a brief moment, then it faded and she smiled. She kissed little Tyrannosaurus. “My little T-Rex.”


	3. Precious Fruit Of His Loins

Slit carefully cuddled little Tyrannosaurus against his chest as he paced back and forth anxiously. A sand storm had swept through just two days ago and he was sure it was still unsafe for a baby to be outside. But Capable was giving birth in the vault, and Slit had heard her cries even with Toast’s bedroom door closed, so he’d fled to the topmost lookout post. Tyrannosaurus would be the bravest and fiercest warrior of the wasteland one day, but he was very little now and he shouldn’t have to hear Capable’s screams of pain. 

When Tyrannosaurus woke up and began crying, Slit knew he was hungry. He grabbed an idle War Pup and told him to go tell Toast that their pup needed feeding. 

But the War Pup came back minutes later and told Slit that his wife had said she couldn’t leave Capable and that he should either bring the baby to her or take him to the Milk Mothers. Slit couldn’t believe his wife would just abandon their pup like this. Capable must be dying. Poor Capable and poor Nux. 

He couldn’t take Tyrannosaurus to witness such a terrible thing, though, so Slit carried him to the milkers’ quarters. But he was reluctant to hand his baby over to any of the milkers. They were obsessed with their lost babies and claimed all babies as theirs. 

“Let me,” said one of them, pushing down her top covering and baring her breasts. She held her arms out expectantly. 

“He’s mine and Toast’s,” Slit said. “You’re just feeding him this once.”

The milker nodded and impatiently tried to take his pup out of his arms. Slit reluctantly allowed her to cradle Tyrannosaurus and watched as she held him to her huge breasts. Tyrannosaurus began suckling eagerly. 

“What a cutie,” the milker cooed. “What’s his name?”

“Tyrannosaurus Rex. But you can just call him Tyrannosaurus.”

The milker’s eyebrows raised. “Like the dinosaur?” she asked uncertainly.

Slit nodded eagerly. “Yeah. The biggest, meanest predator of all time.”

“And his mother agreed to this name?”

Slit scowled at her. “My wife thinks it’s a real shine name!” he told her, though he wasn’t really sure that Toast felt that way. 

The milker looked skeptical, but she ignored Slit to pet Tyrannosaurus instead. When he’d drank his fill of mother’s milk, he fell asleep. The milker seemed to want to keep holding him, but Slit hastily took him away from her. 

He carried Tyrannosaurus with him as he checked to make sure the War Pups were all safe and sound in their den for the night. They were, but most of them were still awake and they crawled out of their bunks to see his baby more closely.

“How many days until he comes to live here with us?” one of them asked.

“Hundreds and hundreds of days,” Slit replied. But it was a lie. Little Tyrannosaurus was going to live in the vault with him and Toast and Nux and Capable and the not-wives forever. There were less-than-mediocre pups who bullied and hurt younger pups because they couldn’t fight pups their own age, and Slit wasn’t going to let Tyrannosaurus fall prey to one of those creatures. 

“He going to be a lancer like you?”

“He’s going to be an Imperator,” Slit said proudly. 

He was on his way up to the green to show little Tyrannosaurus the night sky when Feral Jen accosted him. “Toast wants her baby and your friend Nux needs you,” she rasped.

Slit was expecting the worst, but Capable was not only alive, she’d birthed a healthy girl pup that she and Nux were calling Max. 

“Isn’t she the shiniest and most chrome person ever?” Nux demanded excitedly. 

Slit shook his head. “Maybe second. Tyrannosaurus is the shiniest and most chrome.”

Toast seized their baby away from him and shoved up her shirt to expose her breasts. Little Tyrannosaurus woke up immediately to nurse. 

Slit peered at the baby in Capable’s arms. It appeared healthy and normal. Too bad her parents had decided to name her after the psychotic feral god though. Still, she was almost as precious as his own baby. Nux was at the end of his half life, or he should have been - maybe getting blood from a god had changed that - so Slit hadn’t expected his and Capable’s baby to live. But she was alive and healthy and maybe thousands of days from now she would be Tyrannosaurus’s wife and they’d have babies of their own. 

“I’m afraid it’s all too good to be true and something awful’s going to happen,” Toast said to him that night.

“I thought Capable or her pup would die,” Slit admitted. 

“We’re all so lucky.”

Little Tyrannosaurus slept between them, so they could keep him safe and Toast could feed him. Even in his sleep, Slit could tell when his baby needed something. He woke up when Tyrannosaurus did, before Tyrannosaurus could start to cry. Sometimes Toast didn’t wake fully; she just murmured sleepily when Slit helped Tyrannosaurus to latch onto her breasts and feed. 

Toast snuggled and cuddled him and kissed all over his face when they were alone and told him how happy she was that he was the father of her baby. But when they were with the not-wives and the feral old women, she liked to tease him.

“If he could nurse little T-Rex himself, he would,” she said, after Feral Jen commented that Slit was surprisingly nurturing. 

Slit was the best father in the whole Citadel. Diesel might be proud of his sickly pup, but it was his milker wife and the other milkers who tended to it most. Nux spent as much time caring for his pup and Capable as Slit did for his own pup and wife, but Slit was just plain better at it than him. 

Slit was gently wiping Tyrannosaurus clean with a damp cloth when Nux barged into the nursery with his unfortunately named pup. He put little Max into Rain’s cradle and watched as Rain poked and prodded at her. 

“Toast says Immortan Joe was the lowest scum in the wasteland.”

Nux turned to face Slit, his eyebrows raised. “Capable says that too. What’s your point?”

Slit sniffed. “That pup is only half the Dag’s. She’s half Joe. She might bully our pups. I don’t trust her.”

“You used to play with her, the same as me,” Nux pointed out. “And she’s only a baby.”

“That was before,” Slit said. He finished pinning on the clean diaper and carefully cuddled his baby. “Tyrannosaurus will kick her ass and anybody else’s when he’s older, but I won’t allow her to hurt him before he’s big enough to do it.”

“Capable says Toast has her work cut out for her to prevent your baby from growing up to be an insufferable brat.” 

Slit scowled. “Tyrannosaurus is going to be just like me!”

Nux smirked. “That’s what we’re all afraid of.”


	4. Baby Racing

“Faster, Tyrannosaurus, faster!” Slit shouted encouragingly. 

His pup looked at him and giggled, but didn’t crawl any faster. Maxie was still in the lead, and Diesel’s mediocre pup was gaining ground rapidly. Even the baby Runt had brought was crawling quickly to the finish line, after earlier heading in the wrong direction. Slit hoped Runt had borrowed that baby rather than stolen it - the wives and not-wives would be very angry if he’d stolen it from some Wretched. 

Slit was wondering how he could get Tyrannosaurus to understand the importance of winning and being the best, when his pup made him proud. Tyrannosaurus grabbed Maxie’s ankle and held her back. Maxie turned around to fight him. 

They hadn’t been trained yet and they fought awkwardly, merely rolling around and grappling. Diesel’s sickly pup reached the finish line and was quickly scooped up into her father’s arms. 

“Yeah!” Diesel shouted. “My baby’s the fastest baby in the Citadel!”

Slit thought about reminding him that his baby had been born with lumps and probably wouldn’t live long enough to have pups of her own. But he didn’t say anything. 

Tyrannosaurus and Maxie were both giggling now as they tumbled around, apparently forgetting that they’d been fighting. Nux picked them both up, one under each arm, and came over to Slit. 

Slit took his pup from Nux and watched as Nux strapped Maxie into the harness he wore to carry her and still have his hands free. The Dag sometimes carried Rain in a similar harness, but Slit thought it was rather undignified. Tyrannosaurus was his pup, not a tool or a weapon to be carried around strapped to him. 

He clutched Tyrannosaurus against him as he went to oversee the training of the oldest War Pups. He turned Tyrannosaurus around so the pup could watch what was going on. The War Pups were supposed to be sparring with practice knives, but they looked like babies playing to Slit’s eye. 

“Mediocre,” he said to Tyrannosaurus. “Can you say ‘mediocre’? Tell them they’re mediocre.”

But Tyrannosaurus still hadn’t learned normal language yet. He was still speaking Baby. He muttered several things that Slit was sure meant “yes, Dad, they are terrible and don’t deserve to be called War Pups” in Baby. 

“Mediocre,” Slit bellowed. “Buzzard are going to slaughter you! They’re going to crack open your bones and suck your marrow!”

He set Tyrannosaurus down and went to correct several of the Pups’ grips on their knives and their stance. When he was finished, he went to pick up back his baby, but Tyrannosaurus wasn’t where he’d left him. He’d crawled to the other side of the cavern. Slit was relieved none of the War Pups had accidentally stepped on him; he’d hate to have to beat a Pup. 

“Why don’t you crawl like this during the races?” Slit asked, once he’d caught his pup. 

But Tyrannosaurus only answered in Baby language. 

They spent some time supervising younger War Pups climbing and balancing. One of the girl pups was very shine at it and Slit suggested she name herself ‘Climber’ but she said she liked the name her parents had given her. ‘Annie’ sounded mediocre to Slit, but she wasn’t his pup so he didn’t really care. 

When the sun was starting to set, he went to the repair bays to find Nux so they could walk up to the vault together. Nux was bent over the raised hood of a pursuit vehicle. As Slit approached him, he could hear Nux explaining what he was seeing and doing to Maxie. Capable had once said that Maxie would be able to rebuild an engine before she could walk, and she’d kissed Nux’s cheek and snuggled Maxie after saying it, so clearly she thought it was a good thing. 

Both babies were taken by their mothers and fed as soon as they reached the vault. Then they were put in the nursery to nap while the adults ate. One of the ferals who’d found his way to the Citadel in search of free water had taught the cooks to make something he called ‘tofu’. It was nice to have something new to eat. Slit decided that the tofu man wasn’t really a feral; he was useful, valuable even. 

After his bath, Slit would have retrieved his pup from the nursery, but his wife pulled him down onto her bed and made him breed with her. He tried to leave as soon as they’d finished breeding, but Toast clung to him. 

“I feel jealous of my own baby,” she said. “I miss being the person you adored more than anyone and anything else.”

It was true that Slit loved Tyrannosaurus more than he loved Toast, but it was a different sort of love and he’d assumed that she loved Tyrannosaurus more than she loved anyone else too. He told her this.

“I do,” she replied. “I love my little T-rex. But I miss you.”

Slit didn’t understand it. He was right here. He slept beside her every night. But she was his wife and she was sad - albeit a very strange sort of sad - so Slit snuggled her for a while and then did the things she enjoyed most. 

When he was finally able to go to the nursery, he found Tyrannosaurus and the other babies awake. Rain had climbed out of her crib and was wandering around, looking frustrated because everything was out of her reach. Slit stuck her back into her crib, and carried Tyrannosaurus away. 

He sat in the center of the vault and read his favorite part of the dinosaur book to his pup. Nux appeared shortly afterwards, with little Maxie. Slit was still shocked and horrified that Nux had his pup bathe with him. Nux could be an idiot sometimes, but he couldn’t believe Capable allowed it. Yet recently it happened night after night. 

Tonight Nux held Maxie’s middle while she laid on the surface of the bathing pool and splashed her arms and kicked her legs. 

“Look at her!” Nux cried excitedly. “She’s swimming!”

“She’s trying not to drown,” Slit snapped. “I can’t believe you’d try to drown your own pup!”

Sometimes he dreamt about how it’d felt to drown. It was the worst thing ever. He would certainly never subject Tyrannosaurus to that horror. 

“I’m teaching her how not to drown!” Nux shot back. 

The next day Slit went to see Feral Mel and Feral Jen. Feral Jen frequently worked up in the greens, which she seemed to consider a privilege rather than work. Feral Mel, on the other hand, spent a lot of time in the lookout towers, peering through binoculars, as if she was expecting all the filth of the wasteland to descend on them. But both feral old women liked to spend the hottest part of the day sitting by the pump and sticking their feet in the Aqua Cola. 

“I want you to teach Tyrannosaurus how to swim,” he announced. 

Feral Mel stared at him with a surprised expression, but Feral Jen surveyed the Aqua Cola thoughtfully. 

“Shallow for an adult, but more than enough to teach a baby,” she murmured. 

“So you’ll do it?”

“We’ll do it, boy, but we don’t need you interrupting every other second. Trust us.”

It was hard not to intervene when it looked like Tyrannosaurus was in danger of drowning, but Slit reasoned that the feral old women liked Toast and they wouldn’t let her pup die. 

Finally Feral Jen brought a soaking wet but seemingly happy Tyrannosaurus back to him. 

“A natural at doggy paddling,” she said.

Slit kissed his pup’s forehead. He was going to be the first pup in the wasteland who knew how to swim properly. He was perfect in every way.


	5. Growing

Slit scanned the horizon. He didn’t see anyone or anything. The real danger was back home. Tyrannosaurus was home without him or Toast to protect him. What if some Wretched stole him from the nursery in the vault? He was the most perfect pup ever, and Slit was sure that every filth in the wasteland wanted him for their own. 

“Nothing,” he called to his driver/wife. “Let’s go home.”

“We’re not done yet,” she yelled back. 

Slit stuck his head through the sunroof to talk to his wife/driver. “What if someone’s stolen Tyrannosaurus?”

“Capable wouldn’t allow anyone to steal him any more than she’d allow someone to steal Maxie.”

Slit didn’t doubt that Capable would try to protect his and Toast’s baby as fiercely as she’d protect her own baby, but Capable wasn’t a warrior. Attackers could easily overwhelm her and steal the babies. 

Toast’s jaw was clenched and she looked annoyed when she glanced at him. “Do your job, War Boy.”

Slt watched carefully, but there was no one to challenge. There were no vehicles approaching the Citadel, and the group approaching on foot was rather wretched, clearly only following rumors of free water.

As soon as they arrived home and the car was lifted up into the Citadel, Slit sprinted to the nursery. He was relieved to see his baby safe and sound. 

Tyrannosaurus giggled when Slit plucked him up and hugged and kissed him. Rain clutched Slit’s leg and held her arms out, as if wanting him to pick her up, but he ignored her. 

Toast kissed the back of Tyrannosaurus’s tiny hand and wrapped her arms around Slit, effectively hugging their baby between them. 

“See?” she said. “He’s fine.”

Tyrannosaurus said something in Baby, then he bit the finger Slit had offered to him. He had only recently grown teeth and he loved biting and chewing things. Slit had had to explain to him that he couldn’t bite Maxie because she was shiny and chrome and his future wife and you didn’t bite your wife unless she asked you to. He wasn’t sure Tyrannosaurus had understood him, but he hadn’t bitten Maxie again. 

Toast snuggled Slit that night and nipped at his throat. She didn’t seem sad about Tyrannosaurus sleeping in the nursery now that he slept all night without waking to be fed. Slit, however, couldn’t stop worrying that his baby might be scared. He went to check on him, but Tyrannosaurus was sound asleep, same as Maxie and Rain. 

“It’s okay, Slit,” Toast said. She’d followed him into the nursery and wrapped her arms around him from behind. “He’s starting to grow up.”

“But he’s still so little!”

He felt her bite his back playfully. “So am I.” 

A thousand days passed, and Tyrannosaurus grew from a baby into a little boy. Toast told Slit when four years - or four rotations around the Sun - had passed. Slit was so proud of his son. Lots of babies never lived that long. But that very night he was awakened by the sound of Tyrannosaurus’s cries. 

Slit hurried into the nursery, with Toast close behind him. Nux and Capable were already there, and the Dag and Cheedo appeared soon after. All three children were crying. Slit held his biggest knife ready and peered into each corner and under each crib. He didn’t see anything amiss.

“Bad man,” Rain sobbed. Tyrannosaurus and Maxie just cried wordlessly. 

Toast plucked their son up and cuddled him, but then she said, “One of them had a nightmare and the other two got scared, that’s all.”

Slit snatched Tyrannosaurus away from her and carried him into their bedroom. He carefully laid their son down in the center of the bed. “It’s okay, little warrior, Daddy’s got you. You’re safe.”

“What are you doing?” his wife demanded. 

“Putting him to sleep where he’s safe.”

“Go put him back in the nursery! It was just a bad dream. There’s no danger there.”

“He was scared,” Slit said, defiantly. “But he knows he’s safe here.” 

Slit kissed his son’s cheek. “I’ve got my knives and Mommy’s got her gun, and there’s no one that can hurt my pup.”

Toast sighed loudly. She flopped down on the other side of Tyrannosaurus, then leaned across him to kiss Slit’s cheek. “You’re terrible,” she said. Then she sighed. “And wonderful.” 

Slit didn’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing he knew, Tyrannosaurus was crying and he was suddenly awake. He swiped at the darkness with his best knife, but he couldn’t see anything. 

“Shhh, it’s just a bad dream, sweetie,” Toast whispered to their son. 

“What if it isn’t?” Slit demanded, in a loud whisper. He remembered what it felt like to be a pup and know that the monsters were _there_ , just out of sight of the adults. 

“Slit,” Toast hissed. “Don’t scare him worse.”

She hadn’t even drawn her gun from the holster that hung on their bedpost. Slit held his son against his chest and glared accusingly at his wife, though he knew she wouldn’t be able to see his expression in the dark. 

“It’s okay, Tyrannosaurus. No one can hurt you, not when Mommy and I are here.”

“Imorta Joe,” Tyrannosaurus sobbed.

Oh. Slit understood now. The pups in the Citadel - younger War Pups as well as the children of the Wretched - had started some silly game where they tried to scare their friends by claiming that the ghost of Immortan Joe was going to ‘get’ them. 

Toast gently lifted Tyrannosaurus out of Slit’s arms and held him against her. “It’s just a bad dream, sweetie. I dream about him sometimes too. But he can’t hurt us. He’s dead and gone.” 

Slit hadn’t heard her have nightmares or cry at night in hundreds of days, but there was something in her voice that made him think she wasn’t just saying what she’d said for their son’s sake. He reached over and carefully hugged her and Tyrannosaurus both. 

“You sleep; I’ll keep watch and make sure no ghosts get you.”


	6. Chapter 6

The War Pups who approached Slit were smaller than the others. Younger. Slit frowned. There had been no new War Pups since the women took control of the Citadel. Well, except for the girl pups. But the girl pups hadn’t had their heads shaved, and these two pups were bald. 

One of them sprinted to him and clutched his leg. “Daddy!”

Slit gaped. Surely this couldn’t be his Tyrannosaurus shaven bald and painted white like a War Boy ready for war? But as he peered more closely, he recognized his son. He rubbed Tyrannosaursus’s smooth, bald head. 

“What have you done, pup?”

“We’re playing war,” Tyrannosaurus told him proudly. “I’m you.”

Slit had considered himself the finest War Pup and later the best War Boy, but mediocre, unfit-for-their-rank superiors had always praised Morsov and ranked Slit below him and others like him. To know that his own pup considered him someone worth emulating... Slit’s eyes stung and he felt himself wasting water. 

“Daddy?” Tyrannosaurus asked, sounding confused and looking up at him with worry.

Slit scooped him up and kissed his cheek. “You’re shiny and chrome and sure to ride eternal in Valhalla,” he told him. 

“What about me?” asked the other pup.

Slit answered carelessly. “Yeah, you too.”

But then the wives and not-wives entered what had once been the vault, and the other pup ran to Capable. 

“Mommy!”

Capable stared blankly at the War Pup. Then her expression changed to one of pure horror. “Maxie???”

“Yup. Don’t I look shiny and chrome? I’m Daddy and Ty is Uncle Slit and everyone else is their father, except for Ree, who’s Imperator Furiosa.”

“Governor Furiosa,” the Dag corrected. Her daughter Rain had spent the day with her up among the green and so hadn’t shaved her head or painted herself for war with the other pups.

“Your hair,” Capable wailed, stroking Maxie’s shaven scalp futilely. 

Slit shared her horror. Gone was Maxie’s red mane. She was as bald as any War Pup or War Boy. No wonder he hadn’t recognized her. Though now that he looked more closely, he recognized the big, blue eyes she’d gotten from Nux. 

The Dag wrapped her arm around Capable’s shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze. “It’ll grow back, Capable.”

“Let’s get that awful paint off them,” Toast said. 

Slit reluctantly surrendered Tyrannosaurus to her, and she quickly stripped off his pants and boots and forced him into the pool, where she began scrubbing him vigorously. Capable was doing the same thing to Maxie. 

“I don’t ever want to see you painted like that again,” Toast said. 

“But it’s fun painting each other!” Tyrannosaurus protested. 

Slit thought she and Capable were being too harsh and ruining the pups’ fun, but he spoke up reluctantly. “The paint’s just for half-lifes like me. You’re full-life.”

“We were just playing pretend,” Maxie said, clearly puzzled by her mother and aunts’ overreaction. 

Later, when Slit was lying in bed and Toast had finished reading and snuggled against him, he asked her why she’d made such a fuss over the war paint. 

“Joe used to force us to paint ourselves like you War Boys before he…”

She had told him this before - before she was his wife for real, back when she was only pretending - but he’d refused to believe it at the time. He believed her now, but it still made no sense. Joe’s wives were the shiniest and most chrome women - why’d he make them paint themselves like lowly half-lifes? It was worse than mediocre. He hugged his wife more tightly. 

They were quiet for a while. Then Toast laughed. “I guess we’re lucky the kids didn’t try to scar themselves up too.” 

Slit hadn’t even thought of that. He resolved to speak to his pup and make sure Tyrannosaurus knew he was forbidden from ever carving anything into his skin or branding himself or piercing any part of him. He was completely perfect and didn’t need to be fixed. 

“Capable’s real upset,” Nux confided, the following day, “But I think Maxie looks chrome.”

Slit scoffed. “A breeder isn’t supposed to be bald!”

Nux had been half-hidden beneath the war rig, but he scooted out and stood at his full height, which was slightly taller than Slit. “Maxie isn’t a breeder! How could you call my pup a breeder?!”

“I didn’t mean _breeder_ ,” Slit corrected himself. “I just meant _wife_.”

But Nux must have told Capable and she must have told Toast, because the next day, he was dragged into their bedroom and Toast closed the door before she began yelling at him. 

“DO YOU THINK I’M YOUR BREEDER?” she demanded.

Slit was in awe that such a small body could generate such volume. “No,” he answered meekly, because he’d learned that the wives and not-wives considered ‘breeder’ an invective worse than ‘mediocre’. 

“THEN WHY WOULD YOU CALL MAXIE A BREEDER?!” his wife demanded. Then she started to cry angry tears. She jabbed a finger at his chest hard enough to hurt. “DON’T YOU DARE DENY IT, SLIT!”

“I didn’t mean it, it just slipped out!”

That only made her madder. “It couldn’t ‘just slip out’ if you weren’t thinking it!”

Slit hunched in on himself, resisting the urge to dive beneath the bed and hide from his wife’s ire. “I didn’t mean it as an insult - I think Maxie’s chrome! She’s the second most chrome pup! I just meant… She’s going to marry Tyrannosaurus and have pups one day, not like Furiosa, who’s never had pups!”

“What if Maxie doesn’t want to marry T-Rex?! What if she doesn’t want to marry anyone?!”

Slit gaped at her. It wasn’t something he’d considered. Maxie not having pups would be a waste of Nux’s and Capable’s combined chrome-ness. And she was the only one worthy of his Tyrannosaurus. If she didn’t have his pups, who would? He whimpered. 

“Stop that,” Toast ordered. “I have every right to be furious with you, you’re not going to make me feel sorry for you.” 

“I just want Tyrannosaurus to have a wife as shine and shiny as mine.”

Toast sighed, then she shook her head. “I suppose I should have expected this, what with you stockpiling weapons for T-Rex and scheming to make Repair Boys owe you favors so they’ll build him ‘the most chrome’ car when he’s old enough to reach the gas pedal.” 

“What’s wrong with trying to make sure our pup has everything?”

“As admirable as that is, you can’t impose on other people for the sake of your son. Other people’s children are people just as much as T-Rex. Making everyone else suffer for the sake of himself and his sons - that’s what Joe did.”

It wasn’t the same thing at all. It wasn’t like Slit had suggested locking up Maxie like Joe had done to Toast and Capable and the not-wives. But he didn’t argue because he sensed that Toast wasn’t mad at him anymore. 

“Do you understand?” she asked. 

Slit nodded, and she smiled and wrapped her arms around his middle. 

“My silly War Boy.”

Slit hugged her back. He’d have to keep an eye out for girl pups chrome enough for Tyrannosaurus in case Maxie didn’t want to be his pup’s wife. Though he couldn’t imagine why she wouldn’t - Tyrannosaurus was just like him but even better.


End file.
